


Coven

by athena_crikey



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Drama, Gen, Morse Whump, Yes you read that right, casefic, not an au, oh the 60s, stoners, vampiricism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 17:54:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14141361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athena_crikey/pseuds/athena_crikey
Summary: Blood is stolen from the mortuary; DeBryn becomes more involved than he would like to be.





	Coven

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a Serious Fic; not quite sure where it ended up.

When DeBryn arrived in the CID office, cheeks still warm from the bright July sun, it was to find Morse seated at his desk with a typewritten sheet before him. The lid of a bottle of correction fluid was between his teeth, and he was dabbing white liquid over the top of various typographical errors. 

“I have a complaint to make,” DeBryn announced, standing over the desk so that his shadow fell over Morse’s work. There was a sharp chemical smell rising from the open bottle of fluid; it overlay the general smell of the CID: cigarette smoke, eraser rubbings and old socks. DeBryn would have been hard pressed to say which he least preferred. 

Morse looked up, hand hovering over the page. The DC had an air of irritation to him, his hair was tousled from where he had obviously been mussing it, his tie was askew and a pencil had been jammed crookedly behind his ear. The hallmarks of a man engaged in a battle with paperwork, DeBryn knew of long experience. 

When he recognized DeBryn he straightened, removing the lid from his mouth and screwing it back onto the small bottle. “Doctor?” he enquired, politely. 

DeBryn, without being asked, reached out to wheel over an empty chair and sat himself down. Somewhere behind him a constable let out a laughing guffaw; further down the hall a WPC’s heels clicked on the linoleum. He ignored it all, folding his hands stiffly in his lap. “A complaint,” he prompted, eyebrows rising. “About one of my corpses.”

Morse frowned, a gentle curve of his expressive mouth. “A corpse? Improper cataloguing?”

“Nothing nearly so mundane,” replied DeBryn, grimly. “Someone’s made off with the blood.” 

Morse’s frown turned to something between surprise and squeamishness. “The blood? How? _Why?_ ” he added, frown deepening. 

DeBryn shifted irritably. “As regards how: a series of deep-set punctures to drain the blood from the interstitial tissues. I likely as not wouldn’t have noticed, but there was a complaint with the last transfer to the morticians so I checked this one over just to be sure. As to the why: I couldn’t tell you.”

Behind Morse footsteps clicked; the door to Thursday’s office opened and the inspector popped his head out. “Morse, have you finished with that – oh, hello doctor. What brings you here?” He turned his attention to DeBryn, stepping out to stand behind his constable. 

“Someone’s been pinching blood from corpses,” replied DeBryn, rather crossly. “One corpse, at least.”

Thursday blinked. “Sounds rather ghoulish. What’s in it, then? Student prank? Disgruntled employee?”

“I suppose it _could_ be, only the students confine themselves to dissecting corpses in the Radcliffe during proper hours – not Cowley General. And we’ve no disgruntled employees that I know of.”

“Could there be some medical use?” suggested Morse. DeBryn gave him a very dry look over the top of his spectacles, quashing the question. 

“Perhaps Morse had better stop by the hospital and take a look around. Make sure your locks are up to snuff and so on.” Thursday looked significantly to Morse, who rose and reached around behind him to take his suit jacket down off its peg. “You can get that report in to me later,” he added, then turned to return to his office; Morse’s eyes darkened as they dropped from Thursday to the page in front of him, correction fluid still damp in spots. 

“I can give you a lift,” offered DeBryn. Morse gave him a wry quirk of the lips, and they left together.

  
***

The morgue, as always, smelled of carbolic soap and Jeyes’ Fluid. DeBryn held the door open for Morse, then followed him into the gleaming white interior, made brighter still by the summer sunlight filtering in through the dusty windows. Lying on the metal gurney in the centre of the open space was a thin corpse draped in a white sheet.

“Edgar Bismuth, recently deceased on the Nightingale Ward,” explained DeBryn, folding back the sheet down to reveal a young man with sunken cheeks and a toast-rack chest. He pulled the sheet back to Bismuth’s hips, and laid it down. “Congenital heart defect,” continued DeBryn, pulling on a pair of latex gloves. “He was lucky to have made it this far in life.”

Morse grimaced, eyes downcast. 

“You can see here,” said DeBryn, turning the body onto its side and indicating blue-black punctures in the back, “Our thief at work.”

Morse’s eyes flashed over, then down again quickly, his face nearly as pale as the corpse. “How much blood would that have yielded?”

DeBryn let the body slip back down to lie on its back. “Less than a pint. Post mortem blood coagulates quickly; in this case it would already have been thick enough to prevent significant loss.”

“Could this have been more about the desecration than the theft?” Morse relaxed slightly as DeBryn pulled the sheet back over Bismuth’s body, hiding the lean, pale corpse from view. The cloth rustled in the silence of the morgue, white cotton all that separated life from death. 

“It seems a particularly pointless way to go about it, if so. There are much more brazen ways to desecrate a corpse, and why bother with it at all if not to make a statement?” 

Morse nodded idly, chewing at his lip. “And this is the first instance that you’re aware of?” 

“Yes. I shall certainly be on the lookout now, though.”

Morse stepped back and looked around, eyes flashing from the door to the windows. “Any idea how anyone could have gotten in?”

“That wouldn’t have presented an insurmountable challenge, I’m afraid. The door’s left unlocked during daytime hours, although you would have to make it through the hallway with the rest of the pathology offices. Overnight the door’s locked, but all the porters have keys as well as several of the pathology staff, and we’ve never had reason to be terribly careful about security until now. Like as not the door’s been left open before.”

“And it would be easy enough to lift a key,” suggested Morse. DeBryn shrugged.

“If one were sufficiently light-fingered. That suggests an in-house connection, though.”

“Whereas an unlocked door would admit anyone,” finished Morse. He walked over to the door and turned the handle, then shut the door and locked it, giving it a hard yank. “It all seems in order.” He opened the door again and took a look at the key plate. “No signs of it being forced. Do the windows open?”

DeBryn stepped back to allow Morse past him as the constable strode over to the bank of windows set high in the wall. This being the basement, they looked out at ground height on the car park beyond. “I believe they did originally; the frames were painted over before my time and they haven’t been opened since.”

Morse boosted himself up onto the counter and pushed aside some of the dusty red-glass bottles housing surplus formaldehyde and carbolic acid to try the windows himself. They didn’t budge. “You’re right. Besides, the dust up here is enough to show that no one’s been in this way.” He slipped down again, wiping his hands briskly. The dust flaked away in the sunlight. “One way or another, whoever it was came in through the front door.”

“I’ll circulate a memo instructing staff to be assiduous in locking up from now on. And I shall keep a closer eye on my corpses,” said DeBryn, darkly. 

“Perhaps you could give me a list of those with keys to the mortuary. Just to be sure.”

DeBryn shrugged. “If it will help.”

  
***

Cowley General was a busy hospital, and the pathology department was perennially swamped with work; not so the mortuary, which tended to see only a handful of corpses a week except during the peak of the influenza season.

DeBryn was in his office reviewing the results of a round of tests for a nasty blood infection when the door to the mortuary opened and a gurney with a squeaking wheel was pushed past his door. He put down the report and stood, spine popping as he stretched. 

Past the main tiled autopsy suite, the porter was just manoeuvering the gurney into the cold storage. Jeffries, a tall Cowley lad with quick dark eyes and rough workman’s hands. He did odd jobs around the hospital in addition to portering patients, and occupied an awkward position in the hospital hierarchy: below the privileged medical staff, but above the cleaners. 

“Who’s that, Jeffries?” 

“Just come down from Ivy Ward, doctor. Sepsis death.” 

“I see.” 

Jeffries emerged from the refrigerated room to nod to DeBryn, before hurrying out. 

DeBryn waited until the heavy oak doors had fallen closed behind the porter to pad in after the corpse. Usually he only checked the toe-tag for name and cause of death. Now he performed a full external examination, checking the corpse as carefully as he would in a murder enquiry. The greying skin was mottled; otherwise there were no external symptoms, as was to be expected in a sepsis case.

The deceased was an older woman, her hair grey at the temples and the skin of her face and neck loose and beginning to wrinkle. There was an indentation in her left ring finger where a wedding band had once sat, before being removed with the rest of her effects to be returned to her family. 

Nodding to himself, DeBryn pulled the sheet back over the grey corpse and let it fall, hiding the body from the soulless fluorescent lights overhead. 

Satisfied, he returned to his office for the duration of the afternoon. When he left that night, he locked the door behind him with deliberateness.

  
***

The first thing DeBryn did upon arriving at the mortuary the next morning was check the previous afternoon’s female corpse. There were no signs of blood-letting, nothing anomalous at all in the cold body. Reassured for the moment, DeBryn settled in to his usual routine. When the time came in the afternoon to release the body of the young man to the embalmers, he signed the papers with only a slight hesitancy. Just after it left a trauma case came in, a victim in a traffic accident.

“Just down from Casualty,” reported Jeffries, tucking the sheeted gurney into the cold storage. There was a small pink stain on the otherwise pristine white of his collar. 

“Nick yourself?” asked DeBryn pleasantly, nodding to the porter’s collar.

Jeffries raised a self-conscious hand. “Must’ve done,” he muttered, rubbing at it. The motion bared a small square of reddened skin, an inch too low to be inflicted by shaving. Before DeBryn could comment Jeffries had hurried out, in his customary hurry. 

DeBryn stepped over to examine the new arrival. He twitched back the sheet to reveal a deceased was a man in his forties, solidly-built with a high brow and a firm jawline. He would have been attractive, if his scalp hadn’t been split half-open, revealing the white of bone below. 

DeBryn performed a quick external examination, revealing crushed ribs, a broken femur, and the fatal head trauma. The head wound had clearly bled prior to decease, but that had been cleaned up in Casualty. Now there were just traces of red in the hair and the eyebrows; otherwise, no external injuries. DeBryn replaced the sheet and returned to his office.

He spent a short white composing a list of the hospital staff with a key to the mortuary, and when he was finished it phoned it through to Morse. 

“Any new concerns, doctor?” asked Morse, when he had finished reading the list of key holders. 

“Not as yet. Last night was quiet. I’ve a new corpse in; a road accident. My work’s been piling up after my summer holiday, so I may stay late tonight to get ahead of it and keep an eye.”

“You’d better let us handle that,” said Morse, dubiously.

“Nonesense,” replied DeBryn, tapping his pencil against his desk. “I shall be perfectly safe in the hospital. Besides, I don’t anticipate being here later than nine; it will still be light outside. Hardly the hour for lurking creatures of the night.”

“I’ve yet to encounter a vampire, but I’ve met plenty of felons – even some who operate in public institutions. Please don’t take any risks.” Morse sounded displeased, but also resigned.

“I shall exercise my discretion. Good day, Morse.” He hung up, looking down at the list of men and women he knew personally – and trusted. Shaking his head, he tucked it away in a drawer and set to work at the pile of papers that had accumulated during his recent absence.

  
***

The draught from the main mortuary room was pleasant during the warm July day, but as night fell and the temperature dropped, DeBryn found it less desirable. Eventually, around eight o’clock having just returned from fetching some coffee from the canteen, he closed the door entirely. The odds of anyone showing up with an untoward purpose in mind were slim, after all, and his work took precedence.

He worked for a further hour, finally coming within sight of the bottom of his stack of forms, reports and requisitions, before deciding to call it a night. He had just shut off his desk lamp when he heard a sound in the mortuary.

Corpses arrived at all hours of the day and night of course – there were perfectly legitimate reasons for a visitor even at 9pm. 

That was the message DeBryn reinforced to himself as he stood, stepping closer to the solid wooden door that separated his office from the white tiled room beyond. Some instinct he had never noticed before prompted him to turn out the overhead office light; standing in the darkness without even a line of light creeping underneath his door, it became obvious that whoever was in the mortuary had not turned on the light. 

The more cautious part of him considered calling the police, or even just another colleague from elsewhere in the hospital. But the idea of reporting that he was calling because he thought he had heard something in the mortuary sounded thin even in the privacy of his thoughts. Much easier to simply confront whoever was there – and if as was likely he had misheard, or it was someone with a perfectly legitimate reason, well then no one had been bothered. 

DeBryn turned the handle and stepped through into the mortuary, lit poorly by the remains of daylight petering in through the high windows. Then he saw the flash of torchlight and paused. Someone was in the cold room. 

Much later, he would realize that this was the moment he should have returned to phone the police. As it was, though, he advanced alone across the mortuary – his mortuary – and into the cold room. 

“Who’s there?” he demanded. 

The torch swung around to shine directly in his eyes, dazzling him. Then something struck him in the side of the head, and everything went dark.

  
***

He came to feeling sick and dizzy, with a throbbing head and a sensation of being far too hot. The back of his vest was sweaty, cotton stuck uncomfortably to his skin. He could smell wood smoke and the sharp, distinctive odor of cannabis.

At first upon opening his eyes, he thought that he must have mislaid his glasses; the world was blurrily out of focus, shapes dark and ill-defined. But as he blinked his short-distance vision cleared and he realised he was sitting in a large room lit only by a fire, the opposite side of the room wreathed in darkness.

All around were half-naked figures, their skin cast in warm tones from the firelight. They were men and women both, young and carefree, sitting and lying on the floor as their ancestors might have millennia ago. All were wearing masks, mostly hastily-assembled strips of cloth tied over the eyes with slits cut through although some had donned more traditional domino masks. There was a haze of smoke in the room; several of them held lit joints. 

The room was largely unfurnished, the windows boarded up from the inside with rough wooden planks. The floor was of some dark wood, scarred and uneven with age; the walls were papered with Victorian wallpaper that had been torn through to reveal the plaster below in some places.

In the centre of the room, like some sort of heathen alter, stood a large brass-framed bed. It was empty, untucked sheets tumbling down the sides to brush over the hardwood floor. All around it sat tin goblets, some upright and others lying on their sides. There were about a dozen of them; roughly the same number as the men and women in the room. 

“He’s awake,” said someone nearby; DeBryn sat up abruptly, wincing at the sudden bolt of pain in his head. Concussion, he diagnosed silently. His arms were restrained uncomfortably behind his back and refused to move when he tried to shift them.

“What is this?” he asked, voice shriller than he liked. All around him the men and women were sitting up, heads turning to look at him. The masks gave them a fey, dangerous feeling. He felt as though he had dropped into a pride of lions, alone and unarmed.

“This is our coven, man of death,” answered one of them, a well-built man wearing only a torn pair of loose shorts and a black domino mask. His skin glistened in the firelight, and his eyes shone as he stared down at DeBryn. “Welcome.”

“I would appreciate the welcome more if my arms were freed,” said DeBryn sharply. That produced laughs, some of the crowd throwing back their heads in stoned amusement. DeBryn began to notice that many of them bore small wounds on their bare skin; healing cuts, many of which were still red. The man who had spoken had a long raised wound on his shoulder. 

“This is the first time we have brought a guest to our proceedings. You should be honoured,” said a young woman, her voice full and throaty. Her hair was thick and dark and curled and fell down her back wildly, intermingled with the ends of the strip of tan cloth that made up her mask. DeBryn stared back frostily. 

“I would be honoured to be allowed to leave, madam,” he said. 

The well-built man shook his head slowly. “That, unfortunately, cannot be permitted.”

DeBryn opened his mouth to speak, when from somewhere outside the doorway something creaked, long and loud. The assembly paused, only the fire continuing to crackle.

“Someone’s here,” said a voice from the crowd. The words ran around the group like an echo, their calm self-possession destroyed. 

“You two,” the well-built man pointed out two men by the door. “Find out who it is and bring them here.”

The two indicated rose, one of them pausing to put out his joint, and disappeared into the darkness that DeBryn took to be the door to the rest of the building. 

DeBryn opened his mouth to shout, and was abruptly pulled back by the shoulder by the man beside him. A wave of dizziness rendered him temporarily insensible, world swaying sickly while his pulse pounded in his temples. 

When he had blinked away the fog of pain and sickness he saw the two mostly-naked men return, dragging between them a third, wearing a dark suit and tie. 

Morse.

“Let go of me – let _go_ or –” Morse fell abruptly silent upon being pulled into the room of what DeBryn was beginning to think of as the coven. His bright eyes flitted around the room, pausing on DeBryn but not saying anything and DeBryn had the sudden realization that the less these people knew about Morse the better. 

“Search him,” ordered the well-built man; by now DeBryn had noted him as clearly being their leader. A third man stepped forward to help restrain Morse while one of the other two went through his pockets. They turned up his wallet and, far worse, his warrant card.

“He’s a copper.” The news jumped from person to person like lightning, leaving them struck stiff and dumb. 

“Then he’ll be first,” said the leader, after a moment, breaking the silence. “Give those here.” He took Morse’s wallet and warrant card and tossed them into the flames, ignoring Morse’s cry of protest. 

“He is younger and fitter; a much better source,” said the woman with the black hair, stepping forward as Morse was dragged to the bed. He was kicking and flailing, putting up a strong, determined fight. The young woman reached down behind the bed and produced a clear bottle; from it she poured some liquid onto a handkerchief and walked over to Morse. She held the kerchief over his face until he slumped; chloroform. “Be glad,” she told him, “You won’t remember your transformation.”

“What are you doing to him?” demanded DeBryn fretfully, fear welling up inside him. The coven ignored him.

They stripped off Morse’s suit jacket, then lifted him onto the bed and tied his arms with rope to the brass headboard. His shirtsleeves were ripped open, baring his arms to the shoulder. 

A slight woman from the back of the coven stepped forward with a bundle in her arms. The other members parted to make way for her and she passed through to stop at Morse’s side. As she put her burden down on the bed, DeBryn recognized it for what it was: tubing and blood bags. 

“My god,” he said, eyes falling from Morse’s prone form to the empty goblets around the bed. “Are you mad?”

“His strength will become ours. As will yours, in time,” said the dark-haired woman, turning briefly. “Your feast must now wait until tomorrow.”

“You can’t keep us here.”

She smiled coldly. “Do not worry; the period of your captivity will be brief.” 

“And after that?” asked DeBryn, throat tight, looking to Morse. His head had fallen back to expose his throat, his breaths slow and deep. 

She raised a finger to her lips. “That’s a secret.”

DeBryn felt his heart contract. They had already burned Morse’s identification, had allowed them to see this much – would they simply be allowed to go once the horrific ritual was over? DeBryn doubted it. 

On the bed, the slight woman sunk the butterfly needles into both of Morse’s arms, each needle giving into a tube that let out into a blood bag. The bags began to slowly fill with deep red liquid, the crowd muttering eagerly. Morse’s head began to twitch, eyelashes fluttering. 

Once one bag was filled the slight woman removed it and replaced it with another, handing the full bags back. “You can’t take that much – you’ll kill him,” barked DeBryn, trying to stand and slamming into the wall. His head spun but he continued on, staggering to his feet with his arms still lashed behind him. “Stop – _Stop!_ ”

A tall man turned around, his goblet already full. “Please, sit down,” he said, his voice pleading. 

DeBryn recognized it – and the small wound on the man’s neck. “Jeffries? Untie me, they’ll kill him. _You’ll_ kill him.”

On the bed Morse’s breathing was becoming shallower, breaths coming faster. He moaned, head lolling to the side. Blood continued to flow into the plastic bag, pooling there. 

“I can’t, doctor – we need him. Blood gives us long life, vitality, youth.”

“That’s ridiculous,” snapped DeBryn. “You’re talking nonsense – fairy tales. The only one who needs that blood to live is Morse!”

“You don’t understand,” began Jeffries. 

From outside came another wooden creak. The room stilled, but this time before anyone could be sent out into the darkness beyond footsteps stormed up, the door bursting open. 

Coppers flooded into the room, led by DI Thursday. The coven members scattered every which way but were trapped like rats – the only way out was the door through which the police officers were streaming. 

“Thursday, stop the blood transfusion. Stop it now,” ordered DeBryn, shouldering his way past the paralyzed Jeffries to the bedside. Thursday met him on the other side, pulling the needle taped into Morse’s right arm out and putting pressure on the site with his thumb. He reached across and did the same on the other side. 

“He’ll need fluids and a transfusion; they’ve taken at least four units,” said DeBryn. 

“Here, doctor.” Sergeant Strange loomed up out of the mess of coppers and coven members and cut DeBryn’s arms free; he brought them around painfully to chafe them. 

“Thank you, sergeant.” He leant forward and put his fingers against Morse’s throat; his pulse was quick and weak. “Morse? Can you hear me?” 

Morse’s eyes slid open, pupils very dilated. He turned his head slowly towards DeBryn but didn’t speak, eyes glittering in the firelight. “You’ll be alright, Morse. You’ll be alright.”

“But what the hell did they want?” asked Thursday, angry and confused, as the coven members were marched out of the room, two to an officer. 

“It appears, inspector, that they wanted blood for some bizarre ritual. They’ve clearly been making do with their own and that of my corpses, but when I interrupted Jeffries, the opportunity for a fresh outside source must have been too great to refuse. How Morse came to be here…”

“He was running by the hospital to check on you when he saw them take you out; he called for back-up before coming in after you.”

“Thank god he did. You can stop the pressure now; we’ll check for further bleeding.”

Thursday removed his hands carefully; Morse failed to bleed further, and both men gave a quiet sigh. “You’d better go call for an ambulance; I’ll stay with him,” said DeBryn.

Thursday gave DeBryn a searching look, but must have been satisfied with whatever he found there because he stepped away, leaving the two of them alone in the room. 

“Morse?” asked DeBryn again softly, reaching out to loosen Morse’s tie. Morse frowned and tried to turn away, only managing to turn his head. “It’s alright Morse, it’s just me. You’re safe now. They’re gone; you’re safe.”

“Max?” asked Morse. 

“That’s right,” replied DeBryn, quietly charmed at the use of his first name. Morse was usually a model of formality, despite the years they had worked together. “I’ll keep an eye on you ‘til you’re back to your usual self; it’s the least I can do.”

Morse closed his eyes. “Okay,” he said, and dropped off.

  
***

“Marijuana wasn’t all they were high on,” reported DeBryn to Morse the next day, the latter ready to be discharged from hospital. “Your lot found LSD and heroine in the house as well.”

Morse frowned. “So what? It was all some strange trip – some drugged delirium for them?”

“For many, yes. Their leaders – Tony Maxwell and Lucy Novak – undoubtedly believed the nonsense they were peddling; they got the rest of their motley crew high on whatever was at hand and created an elaborate mythos around the concept that drinking blood would extend their coven’s lives. It’s not a new idea.”

“Not one I expected to encounter in Oxford, however,” replied Morse, tying his tie. 

“Or among my colleagues.” DeBryn shook his head. Jeffries, along with the rest of them, had been arrested on a number of charges, several of them serious. DeBryn hadn’t known the young man well, but he had always seemed polite and pleasant. It was a rough awakening. “On another note, Morse, I believe I owe you an apology.”

Morse raised his eyebrows. “Why is that, doctor?”

“Although I promised to exercise my best judgement in confronting the mortuary thief, I put myself – and you – in harm’s way instead. Over the past few years I have rebuked you for doing the same; I feel not only a hypocrite, but a fool.”

Morse smiled. “All that means is that I now have some company in my own foolishness. I don’t mind it.”

DeBryn clasped him on the shoulder. “Thank you. And as compensation, I believe I can give you a lift to wherever it is you’re going.”

“The station, doctor – last night will have created a hell of a lot of paperwork.”

“One more thing, Morse,” said DeBryn, as they walked off the ward together. “If you cared to, after last night, I believe you could call me Max.”

Morse blinked, surprised, and then gave a sudden, shy smile. “Max, then.”

END


End file.
